


like the good times never end

by vaultingus



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, M/M, Paris (City), Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 09:15:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaultingus/pseuds/vaultingus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he looks back, he figures this moment was the beginning of it all; the beginning of the long, hot summer that started everything that ever mattered. There was something too gritty, too authentic about the sultry streets of Paris, the lack of air conditioning in the loft, the scraping of pennies together to buy food, the long nights with the windows propped open, the bottles of wine clutched in their palms, the smell of paint drifting from Zayn’s room, the coffee-fueled mornings watching the sun creep over the river. It forced all of them to grow up; to search within and without themselves for some semblance of meaning. Everything would change after that summer, for better or for worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like the good times never end

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is dedicated to my beautiful, lost-in-London Chey and all the kids who don't know how the hell to grow up. We'll get there someday.
> 
> Title & theme based on U.S. Royalty's "Vacation Vacation." Eventually I'll have playlists up on my tumblr, dangimpala. Feedback makes me happier than it should. xo

Louis is lonely.

Not the kind of lonely he gets when his friends are out of town or the kind he feels when it’s 4 p.m. in the winter and the sunlight casts sickly shadows on the wall. It’s not even the type of lonely he feels when he has too much free time to think about his life and all the choices that have led him to perpetual aimlessness.  
  
He peers through the deluge of raindrops sliding down the windowpane’s warped glass. They make the world look like a watercolor, something abstract that he has to peer at for a long time to make sense of the shapes. The traffic lights flash methodically, and he’s nearly lulled to sleep, but not quite. No, that would be courtesy of the jetlag. He’s across the ocean from his home, he’s been awake for two days, and he doesn’t know a soul here. So yes, he’s lonely.

He leans forward and breathes onto the glass. Fog fans out around his lips. _At least I’m not a ghost yet_ , he thinks. He knows he’s being melodramatic by thinking such things from the top floor of a Parisian hotel, but he’s also ridiculously self-indulgent when it comes to pretending his life is like a sad foreign flick, so he lets it slide.

 _God, I suck. I’m a parody of a stereotype,_ he thinks. He laughs sharply. He realizes he’s alone in a hotel room laughing. He flops backward onto the fluffy bed. _I wish I had a dog right now. Or my weed._

He misses Niall blowing smoke rings in his face, even though it’s only been a few days.  All the things about Chicago he’d spent summers complaining about suddenly seem like treasures: late-night texts to rendezvous at warehouse parties, stumbling down the street with Liam to buy drunken Slurpees and taquitos at 7-eleven, sneaking up onto the rooftop of apartments and tossing pennies onto sidewalks below. For all the previous collective summers of his life, they’d seemed like pathetic time-killers. He and his friends always hovered on the ledge of “real life,” trapped in a city they knew so well they could close their eyes and still find their way home. Louis had always pictured it like a maze with no exit, so they simply ran down the corridors and tried to forget the walls surrounding them.

“Hey, man, imagine when we get out of here,” Niall would commonly say as he passed the bowl to Louis. “We’ll hit the West Coast. I’m gonna be a singer. You can carry my bags.”

Louis would punch him in the arm, but words like Niall’s still put stars in all their eyes. They waited eagerly to turn 18, then they packed up and moved downtown for college, and when that got old, they set their sights on turning 21. They drank their weight in alcohol and added arsenals of blurry nights and stories that began with “remember when?” to their repertoire. They owned the city most nights, but others merely found them curled up underneath their blankets, reminding themselves how small they really were.

And now, at 22, Louis has left his stomping ground and hopped a plane to Paris, of all places. He’s never learned a word of French besides some dirty phrases from a book he’d seen at Barnes and Noble. He doesn’t have any particular favoritism toward French culture over others, to be honest. He’d seen a flyer for a summer film program in the heart of Paris and he’d applied on a bored whim. With his university-lent film equipment and one vintage suitcase in tow, he had kissed his mom and sisters goodbye and let his feet leave the ground.

The simultaneous worst and best thing about the program is that it runs entirely on an individual basis. Some of his friends had traveled in packs of clueless Americans around cities and done the whole school-sanctioned study abroad trip, but this trip is based on a stipend (Louis considers himself very bad at handling money so this is scary) and the agreement that he’ll come back with usable hours of film footage to compile into a final presentation to be shown at a gallery in September. It’s a sweet gig, but it leaves him staggering under all the possibilities.  
  
His stomach growls and it crawls up into his throat. _You monster,_ he laughs, sitting up to eye the hotel’s lineup of weird French peanuts (he assumes) and chocolate bars with unfamiliar wrappers. They’re probably expensive and generic, all at the same time. He runs the pad of his pointer finger along a wrapper. He swears he hears it whisper to him. He has emotional munchies. _I deserve this,_ he whispers as he thrusts open the wrapper. He’s a mess and he knows it.

In the hours after, he remains perfectly still on the white duvet, splayed out like he’s stopped midway through making a snow angel. He traces cracks in the ceiling to their source with his eyes, wondering if everything will seem more exotic because he’s on a different continent or if he’ll be the same lost boy he is at home.

When he finally drifts off, the sun is creeping over the horizon. It bathes his face in warm pinks and oranges. He wakes briefly and reaches for a pillow to hug to his chest as he turns away from the blaze of light. In the instant between sleeps, he wonders if every sunrise will empty him out until he’s too hollow to return home.

____

His lip is trembling by the end of the second day. He huddles underneath an awning as he carefully peels open his soggy city map. The rain relented for about ten minutes around noon, which lured him out into the street. It promptly started pouring so hard he could barely see through it. This was a problem as today he was searching for apartment rentals. He couldn’t stay in the hotel forever, not with those tempting candy bars and its rickety air conditioning system. He wonders if he stands on the side of the road looking sad if anyone will help him. From what he’s seen of the French so far, he thinks probably not.

He ducks into the nearest bakery (he thinks) just off Rue Racine. He’s crossed the Seine about four times in his confusion and his legs are tired from his frantic city trekking. He barely meets the eyes of the blonde girl behind the counter as he stutters out his order.  
  
“Uh, avez-vous Yorkshire…tea?” He’s embarrassed by his choppy delivery. A drip of water slides from his fringe, down his temple, and around the curve of his cheek. The girl clearly thinks he’s crying.  
  
“Oui bien sûr,” the girl coos. Her voice is captivating. Louis raises his head and looks at her as she’s counting out his change. She’s shorter than he is with candyfloss blonde hair and mile-long eyelashes. He’s staring at them intently when she gestures for him to take his change.  
  
“You’re not from around here, dear?” She asks, grabbing a jade green mug from a rack to begin brewing his drink. Her accent sounds from her throat. Louis wishes he had a French accent and not just a suburban Chicago drawl.

“American,” he says. “Blame my bad French on our terrible education system.”

She giggles at him and he feels some tension melt from his shoulders. These are the first words he’s spoken in a day to anyone except himself or the concierge. He’s forgotten how comforting a human laugh can sound. A few more days alone and he’ll be a proper animal, at this rate.

“Why are you here?” She asks.

Louis looks behind him to make sure he’s not holding up a line. He surveys the café as he gathers words for his answer. Everyone seems to be dressed in varying degrees of chic work clothes. He wishes he’d opted for something a little more suave than black jeans and an old shirt of Liam’s that sags around Louis’ shoulders. He’d needed the sentimental boost this morning when he’d been heading out the door, and had smiled when he pictured how enthusiastic Liam would be upon finding out that Louis had worn the shirt on his very first day in Paris.

“Film school?” Louis tries. “Er, école de cinema?”  
  
The girl laughs. “I speak some English, you know.”

Louis blushes. Nothing has made an idiot out of him so far like trying to exist in a different country.

“What films do you make?” She asks.

He shrugs. “I’ve helped with a few documentaries about buildings in Chicago? Where I’m from in America? But I want to start filming people.”

Her head is ducked, tendrils of hair sweeping around her face. He can’t gauge her reaction from where he stands.

“Chicago, is that by New York?” She asks.

Louis laughs. He guesses this is about the same as when he asked the concierge how far it is to London from his hotel.

“Not really. Half a country, about. I’ve only been to New York once.”

She nods. “That’s where my Zayn is from. New York. Brooklyn.”

She’s nearly finished with his tea, and he’s itching to hold the cup between his hands and warm up. He may not have found an apartment today, but this coffee shop is the first tiny slice of comfort he’s felt in two days and he wants to nestle in a chair in the corner and try not to cry.

He nods politely, too wiped to really inquire about this Zayn character. He tries to show the cashier (“Perrie,” he can see on her nametag reads when her hair moves out of the way) with his eyes that he appreciates her kindness. He thinks she understands. 

She walks by his chair as he’s finishing up his drink and leans down conspiratorially, her hair brushing Louis’ shoulder.

“Hey, Chicago,” she whispers. “Come back tomorrow and meet Zayn. And try a scone. I made them. You will offend me if you do not.”

Louis smiles into the rim of his cup as he gazes around the room at all the patrons. Nothing has changed in the room, but somehow the air seems lighter. He wonders why all the people aren’t smiling with him. He wonders if they know what it’s like to feel completely heels-over-head lost and what a relief it is when someone finally leaves a faint trail to follow.  
  
____

Zayn opens with a profound “hey, y’alright?” that immediately captivates Louis, who nibbles Perrie’s blueberry scone while she watches unblinkingly from the counter. He stares at the swoop of Zayn’s hair. In the few days without much human interaction, clearly he’s lost all his communication abilities. He’ll settle for being Zayn and Perrie’s pet cat if that’s what it takes to earn their love. 

They talk about Chicago, about the way the wind slices through the city blocks and mutual soft-of friends they know at DePaul. Zayn twists his fingers together as they talk and mostly looks at the table. At first, Louis thinks maybe Perrie forced him to be here, but later he figures maybe he’s just shy.

Zayn’s eyes, already flecked with gold and the loveliest Louis’ ever seen, light up when they get the topic of New York, and Louis imagines what it must be like to uproot yourself and escape across the ocean permanently.

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot nicer here,” Zayn says of New York and Paris. “Everything there was broken in some way, or scraped together between all of us who lived in the loft. But it was ours, y’know?”

Louis nods. He guesses Paris will never feel like his, either. He’s beginning to doubt he has much of anything inside or outside of himself, or ever did.

“I’d go back there in a second,” Zayn sighs. Chews his lower lip. Runs a hand over the back of his neck. “But I found Perrie and I just knew I had to stay.”

Louis looks over at Perrie. She’s the kind of person who glows, even when she’s wiping out dishes or taking a snobby coffee order. Zayn simmers. Perrie glows. He’s known them for two days and this much is obvious.

“And anyway, staying home isn’t much of an adventure,” Zayn says, almost as much to himself as to Louis. “I tell myself that a lot. I’m the kind of person who would be all too comfortable looking at the life I want from underneath my blankets. I have to try hard to stay daring. Or, like, to convert the world in my head to reality.“

Louis nods again. He wonders if he’s adventurous. At home, sure. He’d always been the one to come up with the plans for the night. He rarely turned down a dare. When Liam faltered about the logistics of their activities (“I’m not trying to be the dad here but technically that’s _trespassing_ , guys”) then Louis would be there to sling his arm around Liam’s shoulders and coax him into the great unknown. He’d run from cops a handful of times. He’d barely missed out on a few possession charges, once by sweet talking and once by rolling out of a window into a garbage can and scrambling out of an alley. As long as he wasn’t hurting anyone, he’d rarely say no to whatever was suggested.

But here, he feels soft. He’d been decaying for a while, he supposes. As the end of college grows closer, he’s started to panic that soon he’ll have a piece of paper in his hand saying he’s done this _stuff_ but nothing to actually do. To make matters worse, as Louis’ departure date drew closer, Liam and Niall’s conversation topic had switched to what they were going to do post-graduation. Right up until he left, Louis always laughed it off, but inside of him a gnawing urge to figure himself out as an individual had been growing ever since. Take away the frills, the friends, the map of Chicago, the family, the film degree. What is he?

And then he’d found the flyer for the Paris trip. Now he’s sitting in a café talking to two sweet strangers, wondering what the hell he’s going to do for the entire summer and whether he even knows himself at all.

“What about you?” Zayn asks.

Louis picks a blueberry out of the scone and sucks on it as he gathers his words.

“I love Chicago, but it’s too small for me now,” he says. “Like my mom shrunk a shirt in the wash or something.”

Zayn’s eyes move down to his hands then back up to peek through his eyelashes at Louis’ face in an enchanting way. Louis has the odd urge to tell Zayn secrets, but he won’t, since they just met and all.

“I don’t even know what I’m doing here,” Louis continues. “I have to make a film, that’s all I know. And I kind of wanted to be disoriented. I was actually fine on the flight over. Once I got here, I kind of realized it was happening. And now I’m just…treading water, I guess. For three days. Which would be more physical activity than I’ve ever done in my life." 

Zayn clears his throat and laughs.

Perrie walks over and stands behind Zayn, carding her fingers through his hair as she gazes down on Louis.

“What are you boys talking about over here?” She asks, all teeth in her smile.

Zayn closes his eyes in contentment, so Louis answers. “Secrets.”

Perrie stamps her foot. “No fair! I want to hear secrets. Louis, where do you live? We have to get together when one of us isn’t busy working.”

Oh god, someone’s finally asked. Louis feels his cheeks tinge pink. He’s not sure why admitting that he hasn’t found anywhere to live yet makes him feel like such a loser, like he’s not succeeding on his trip or at general life things. 

“Er, I haven’t, y’know—“ he spits out. “—really, um, found anywhere yet.”

Perrie’s fingers freeze. “Where have you been living then?”

Louis looks down at a chip on the edge of the table. “A hotel?”

 _And there it is,_ Louis thinks. _The look of pity._

In the end, Perrie asks Zayn if they can keep Louis, and he realizes his wildest dreams of becoming somewhat of a cat to them aren’t actually that far off. He blushes as little as he physically can and pretends not to hear as they discuss it. 

It’s Zayn who finally turns to Louis. “Er, well this might be weird and all since we just met, but we technically have a third room in our apartment that’s just kind of sitting there right now. Perrie wants to know—“ he sucks in breath as Perrie pulls on his right ear. “—and I, Perrie and I were wondering if you’d want to move in here. Above the shop. We’re a bit strapped for rent anyway, been searching for a roommate.”

Perrie nods. “The last guy we interviewed ate one of Zayn’s paintbrushes and asked if he could bring his, how do you say, lizards. But you would not do that, no?”

Louis shakes his head. He’s scared of lizards. He’s scared of how nice Zayn and Perrie are. He’s scared that the blueberry is lodged deep in his throat. He stutters and finally answers. 

“Yes. I mean no. No lizards, yes to renting the room.”

Perrie claps her hands together once. “Zaynie, finally you won’t have to pay Harry your rent in autobus tokens and silly drawings.”

Zayn scowls. “That was last April. One time. _One_ time.”

“Who’s Harry?” Louis asks, shoving the rest of the scone into his mouth. Suddenly he’s starving now that he can feel some of his stress leaving his body. Neither of them hears over the spray of crumbs and their own conversation (Perrie insists it’s nothing to be ashamed of that Zayn once gave Harry a shirt and a piece of pizza as part of an elaborate rent deal and Zayn physically growls and slips lower in his chair) so Louis drops it. He has a Perrie and a Zayn now and he thinks he can finally spend the summer figuring out whatever he’s supposed to be figuring out and capturing on film. After all, from his past experience, he figures it’s always better to be lonely while surrounded by people than alone in a hotel room he can’t afford. Or something like that.

He looks around the café, taking in the half-finished abstract portrait on the farthest wall, the line of customers snaking away from the counter, the cozy mismatched tables and chairs. He exhales and sends up a quick wish to the universe or whatever is out there that he’ll find home here. _Please let me find something, anything here. I won’t ask for anything again if I can just figure all this out._

Just then, the tiny bell above the door tinkles a delicate note and a dripping wet boy, all elbows and knees, steps onto the welcome rug. He leans over to muss up his sopping curls and finally looks up to where the three of them are gathered. Louis looks at the distant red smear of the boy’s probably just-bitten lips and then into his eyes. _I’m going to revise that one. I’ll never ask for anything again if I can meet this boy. Man. Whatever. Do you hear me, Milky Way? It’s me, Louis._

Either he’s two for two with the universe today or everything really is just a jumble of random happenings, but either way, the most beautiful human Louis has ever seen is walking toward their table and he has real, live, human friends.

Louis realizes he’s been spaced out for the last thirty seconds or so when he tunes back into Earth frequency and catches “…and this is our darling Harry,” fall from Perrie’s lips.

When he looks back, he figures this moment was the beginning of it all; the beginning of the long, hot summer that started everything that ever mattered. There was something too gritty, too authentic about the sultry streets of Paris, the lack of air conditioning in the loft, the scraping of pennies together to buy food, the long nights with the windows propped open, the bottles of wine clutched in their palms, the smell of paint drifting from Zayn’s room, the coffee-fueled mornings watching the sun creep over the river. It forced all of them to grow up; to search within and without themselves for some semblance of meaning. Everything would change after that summer, for better or for worse. 

But that’s for later. Right now, Harry is reaching out his hand for Louis’, and with only a moment of stunned hesitation, Louis is placing his delicate palm in Harry’s and saying hello with the most charming smile he can muster. Before the complicated things can begin, the simple ones must. A crooked smile. A flash of blue, of fringed eyelashes. Perrie’s high voice layering over Zayn’s raspy one. A quarter of a scone left carelessly on the table. There are three boys and a girl. Rain water dripping onto the uneven wooden floorboards. Nothing, or everything, depending on perspective.

 

 


End file.
